I decided to use a gray suede instead of the vinyl that a lot of cosplayers choose for her because I felt like the texture and sheen of suede is much better for her design. In the high resolution photos of her, you can see that there's a definite texture or something to her outfit, so I wanted to get something that was more natural, more organic than vinyl. The dorky explanation (since I am a huge FF nerd-face) is that the place where Lulu lived (Besaid) is really rural and not a city at all, more like a village and some place like that wouldn't really be privy to such a synthetic material like vinyl or PVC or something and that suede fits the monsters in the area better.

For her top part, I decided to make a legitimate working corset with steel boning because I wanted to make sure I looked busty and curvy like Lulu is. She's a bodacious girl and I am definitely not busty like that so I wanted to make my COSTUME make ME busty. Haha. It was kinda tricky because Lulu's laces up the back in her design are about a two inch separation so I had to adjust a bit of the corset sizing weirdly so that even when it's cinched tightly, it's still at least 2 inches apart like her design. I ended up building the corset and then layering over it all with a sheer gauzy whatever so that it has that weird ruffly that Lulu has in her design, and then I threw the bias tape over it to give it panels.
For the skirt I decided to MAKE all the belts. I'm missing ONE belt, her red one (what I fondly like to call her AURON belt) and maybe later when I don't hate myself for making this cosplay as nit-picky as it is, I will add it... I made all the belts so the skirt wouldn't be as heavy and would sit on my hips without falling off. As it is, I had to cheat on the keyhole that she has in the back by disguising some piping to keep the shape (otherwise it would fall off) with the lacings in the corset. Hrrhrr. I added a zipper in the back for no reason. I might fix that and take it out later.
The lace is a mix of 4 or 5 different kinds that I lumped together everywhere. It's not the MOST accurate, I need to paint it but I feel like if I did I could really mess it up, so I was too nervous to.

Personal Thoughts:

This has always been a dream cosplay of mine even way back when I first started to cosplay. I remember playing the game and thinking, "Man. Tidus and Yuna are twits, but LULU. Omigod LULU." I'm so happy that I was able to finally make her and I feel I did her justice. <3

Please don't read my notes about her and my construction of her because they are dumb and WAY too nit-picky and my only excuse is that she's a dream cosplay of mine. OTL